Roman Catholic Archbishops

"Through zealous Word-minded and Word-centered priests, the Word of God will be given its rightful place in the life and ministry of the Church."

"The second greatest value next to human life is the dignity of each person. We all possess dignity because we have been created by the love of God and his fingerprints are on our conscience and in our history. There we find a key to fraternity and not to hatred or rejection."

"The witness of the martyrs should not only amaze us, the testimony of the martyrs should move us, it should be an invitation to us."

"I thank everyone, priests, religious and laity for the affection towards our Pastor, and especially you children, who are the loving face of Christ for the world."

"People have been emailing and calling one after the other to say they had seen the announcement. I myself did not know about the announcement at all and I had no contact in advance. Personally, I don't think I'm the most suitable person to be a cardinal, so I still find it hard to believe."

"I have a heavy heart, and this heart is bleeding for my people who perished in the Jolo cathedral bombings. I have known those regular churchgoers who died in the blast. They have become my family, my brothers and sisters, my heart is really bleeding for them. It's a big emotional upheaval inside and yet my faith tells me to continue extending a hand of friendship, in inter-religious dialogue."

"The Church will continue its work of evangelization and Christian witness as well as human development. As for the rest, it is difficult to predict."

"The positive side of this phenomenon is that it shows there is an increasing thirst for God. But those who are thirsty need to seek the right fountain: the one without the spoilt water."

"Our mission today is to live, preach, witness the Gospel in a social and cultural environment with a Muslim majority. Let us put our lives in the hands of God every day and abandon ourselves to his will, carrying out a mission of dialogue and peaceful coexistence with the faithful of other religions. This peace mission becomes a visible sign of a Gospel that announces and witnesses peace, reconciliation and mercy."

"As a retired clergyman, I'm still a priest. I have much more freedom than I had, but I haven't had much more free time."

"At first they were pushing me, telling me: you are going away from our culture. But now even the traditional chief has given me a village, and made me a chief."

"While we are saying that the Catholic Church is the mother church, then we have to be true to our name and embrace all."

"For our world today, I think it was less difficult than usual for people to think about Jesus in the tomb, and to enter into the Good Friday service, as a heavy shroud covers our land these days. We understand going to pray at a tomb. For those who have lost loved ones in the past weeks, where there could be no proper funeral, there is an extra resonance. Jesus too was not given a wake or funeral, but his body was simply placed in a tomb. Normally there is a finality to that."

"If there is one thing that really brings me joy, it is not feeling like a stranger or a foreigner in any part of the world, because God is our Father and we all are called to be brothers and sisters."

"When we talk about servant leadership, many people fail to understand what exactly it is. To me, when I look at the life of Archbishop Msusa, it best defines what servant leadership is. You have demonstrated to us all that it is important to always remember where we are coming from regardless of how far we get in life."

"We note in particular that there are some worrisome trends in our democratisation and emancipation that push for a worldview independent of and side-lining God, and making human beings dependent on their own intellect, determining for themselves what is right and what is wrong. We are saddened to read that religion should not regulate morals."

"I felt so humbled to receive the pallium. I felt that here I was united with the Holy Father and I felt, who am I to receive such a great honour? My main role as Metropolitan is that of uniting the clergy, the religious and also the laity. We have four dioceses in the Southern region of Malawi namely, Mangochi, Chikwawa, Blantyre and Zomba. My role is to take up the challenge to deepen the faith in Jesus."

"Faith is service to our fellows. You receive faith, you share faith. Aside from water and food that the government provides, what the Church can also give is strengthening of faith."

"Aside from prayers, we are appealing for donations in cash or in-kind for the archdiocese’s ongoing relief operations."

"I want to reflect on one question: What are you doing to shape the minds and consciences of our young people today."

"The question is not whether we help them or not, we must help! The question is how and where do we help them. We need to do it properly."

"There's a right of self-defense here that's involved: We know the government has to respond, so we will not be subjected to these types of attacks in the future. But the response should be measured, restrained as much as possible, to protect innocent civilians. It should not just be military. We should pursue diplomatic ways, legal ways, any other ways we can address that."

"The Catholic Church is not the religious function of a given political society. It is a communion of an order quite different from what national belonging or the framework of the law can provide, a communion open to all."

"We come closer to the heart of the Church if we let ourselves to be guided by our goal, primary and crucial, which is Salvation, if we identify ourselves with our mission, if we intercede for our sisters and brothers, praying for graces they need, and if we share with them our joy that springs from our Faith."

"In the current situation it seems improbable that one could make a priest appreciate, especially at the beginning of his formation, the value of Latin as a language endowed with nobility of structure and words, able to foster a concise, rich, harmonious style, full of majesty and dignity, which allows for clarity and gravity, able to advance every form of culture, the humanitatis cultus, among peoples."

"In these sorrowful moments, in faith we are united in human suffering, in prayer, and in Christian hope."

"May Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whose image is carried about on the Cantabrian Sea, through our cities, fields and valleys, accompanied by the fervor of her children, be the star that guides us to Christ, the safe port of salvation."

"Even though the media has repeated it so many times, the Pope has not decided that we are going to return to celebrating the Mass in Latin. To say such a thing is not only ignorant, it's also thoughtless. It has always been permitted to celebrate the Mass in Latin, even after Vatican II, and the books of the liturgical reform were written in Latin and later translated into the different languages."

"When I speak as the bishop of these people I have to put everything in the light of the Gospel. When I speak to society at large, and I know there are people who embrace this position and others who don't, I have a duty to pass on the Church's message."

"We wish very much the Pope's visit will create an understanding between the people who are living in Thailand of different culture, different belief."

"Catholic doctrine strongly opposes abortion since man was made by God in His image, and blessed him above all other creature. Human life is the Father's most precious gift, valued and full of dignity."

"Conscientious objection is a universally established right; I think that sometimes the problem is how it is understood or put into practice. Doctors and nurses have the right to have their moral, spiritual, and personal convictions respected, but never in detriment to or contempt of anyone."

"We have the impression, at least from the outside, that the West is losing its roots, and the roots of the West are precisely the values that the West brought us during colonisation, and we believed in these values; but today we see that these values no longer exist for the West, and this confuses us a little. We ask ourselves: where is the West going with this kind of approach? And when I say that the West is in danger of disappearing, it is because a people is also its culture, but we have the impression that the West is no longer willing to embrace its culture: everything is relativised, everything is questioned, and this, in any case, disturbs us."

"(About the Synod on Synodality) So, coming to this Synod, the intention was not to address this or that problem. The main intention, the primary objective of the Synod, is about how we can become a new Church together, acquire a new way of being the Church; in our way of being, in our operating structures, in our collaboration structures."

"The Pope himself considered his trip to Congo one of his most important apostolic visits."

"Francis will go down in history as the Pope of reform. He has done a great deal to reform the Church, and this must continue, and I believe it will continue, for the simple reason that before leaving office he concluded the cycle of the Synod on synodality. And what has been produced by this Synod has become a heritage for the whole Church. Interviewer: You mentioned synodality. In mid-March, Francis approved the start of a synodal journey that should lead to an ecclesial assembly in 2028. Can we say that this synodal journey remains unfinished? Cardinal Ambongo: I wouldn't say unfinished. The Pope always repeated: "I pray to the Lord that he will grant me enough time so that the reforms that have begun can reach the point of no return." I believe that the reform initiatives undertaken by Francis have now reached that point. That is why I am convinced that the reforms will continue."

"It has always been important for the Capuchins to encourage lay people to take an active part in the Church and in effect we have many local lay Catholics in the Franciscan Tertiary Order. This is very encouraging for us because the collaboration of well-prepared lay people is necessary for the apostolate."

"Allow our common home to rest from our throw-away culture, our addiction to consumption, to unlimited economic growth, and to the dirty and deadly fossil fuels. Let us open ourselves to the new normal of interconnectedness and interrelatedness. We are in this together."

"To play God today is to be the owner of human life, to control that life in all of his stages and all of its forms. A control that decides who must be eliminated and when."

"The goal of every reform and renewal in the Church is the holiness of its members. The Lord Jesus calls on us constantly to follow the path of ecclesial communion, Catholic faith and holiness in our times, especially among pressing ecclesial and social challenges."

"The mandate remains the same, as the same is Jesus Christ "yesterday, today and forever", and his Gospel, while recipients change and the social, cultural, political and religious situations in which they live."

"Follow the path of the saints, they left their comfort zones to serve the people of God, sharing with them the Word of God which heals and gives life."

"The Indian Constitution is in danger and many people live with a feeling of insecurity. It is urgent to protect the values of the Constitution, including the freedom to practice one's own religion. In this context, especially with the approaching of the general elections, we must strive to better understand our Constitution and do more to protect it."

"In the Middle East and other parts of the world so many innocent people are still convicted. Justice is trampled, and men and women are killed for their faith. We entrust their lives to Jesus Christ."

"There are also blind spots in both cultures... there is no perfect culture. As we say, no one has the complete picture. We need each other to see more facets of who God really is and his call to us."

"Notwithstanding its errors and sins, Christian history succeeded in tracing paths of freedom, dignity, goodness and truth."

"I am convinced that God, in foreknowledge of the future, prepared the desert for the saints to come. I believe he wanted some parts of the world to be rich in the fruits of agriculture and other parts, with drier climate, to abound with holy men. In this way the desert would bear fruit. When he ‘watered the hills from the heights above’, the valleys were filled with plentiful crops. And he planned to endow the sterile deserts with inhabitants, lest any land go to waste."

"I will try my best to jounrey together with you to love God more deeply and love you all."

"Environmental problems frequently affect us here in Haiti and are a wake-up call. Our country is very vulnerable to natural disasters. However, I refuse to hear it called a cursed country. The Lord gave the earth to the children of Adam to till and cultivate it. Our happiness comes from something beyond, originating in the loving heart of the Creator. Geography alone cannot determine our happiness or unhappiness. On the contrary, we see ourselves as children blessed and loved by God."

"The Church is expected, even in the middle of human weakness and error, to guard, in obedience and veneration, the Gospel Christ has entrusted to her. The Pope is not the creator of the faith, but the custodian of the Gospel."